Within the last two decades, cellular telephones (“cell phones”) have become ever more popular as their abilities have increased. In addition to being telephones, the now-common “smart phone” is a personal data assistant, a screen for photos and videos, an Internet browser, a text messenger, a music player, an email portal, a method of payment, a map, a direction finder, a scanner, a camera and many other things. Because of their expanded functions, it has become common for people to carry their cell phones all of the time. Since for many people much of their day is spent inside of a vehicle, cell phone mounts have been developed that attach the cell phone to various locations in the vehicle interior, such as to the windshield, to a heating/air conditioning vent or to a cup holder.
Vehicle cup holders are now almost universally provided in vehicles, but they do not come in a uniform size. Vehicle cup holders typically are cylindrical, frustoconical or nearly so, so as to accommodate a variety of sizes of cans, bottles and cups, but their radii from a central axis significantly differ from one make of vehicle to another. Some vehicle cup holders further have inwardly projecting fingers meant to grip the sides of a beverage container. A successful universal cup holder cell phone mount will have a means to adjust it to fit any of a range of cup holder sizes, but at the same time should be inexpensive to manufacture and should be easy for an end user to deploy. The cup holder cell phone mount also should have a means for holding cell phones of different widths and for adjusting the angle and height of the cell phone screen for optimum viewing, and once installed should resist coming loose as a result of vibration, vehicle acceleration or deceleration or a vehicle change in direction.